As part of the #WomenKnowStuffToo series, a quilt mending and community building session will take place on Wednesday.

Catherine Reinhart, creator and lead artist for the Collective Mending Sessions and a studio artist living and creating in Ames, will lead the Collective Mending Sessions, a series of socially engaged workshops centering on collectively mending a discarded quilt.

The Collective Mending Sessions will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Reliable Street, which is a nonprofit arts organization located in Ames seeking to engage the community through the arts. Located inside a grain elevator, Reliable Street houses Lockwood Cafe and a gallery.

This series cultivates care for cloth and community through the meditative practice of slow stitching. Participants will learn about sustainable textile practices, build community with each other through stitching and assist the artist in finishing the quilt.

“I think that a lot of this exhibition talks about media that have been traditionally associated with women and how women artists can break away from and innovate within those things,” Lilah Anderson, program coordinator for University Museums, said. “I think the mending session is an interesting one because it takes this idea of sewing and women’s work and craft and turns it into something that is public artwork and a way for the community to engage and take apart that idea that women do sewing and textiles and that that is women’s work.”

Reinhart will teach basic mending and embroidery. Sessions last two to three hours and all skill levels are invited. All workshops are free and open to the public. Registration is encouraged.

“It all started with a tattered quilt from my teenage years that I told my mother to discard,” according to the Collective Mending Sessions website. “Being wise, she did not. In 2018, this quilt returned to me and thus began the slow work of hand mending. I quickly realized that I needed and wanted help repairing this object. The Collective Mending Sessions was born. This project is a series of socially engaged workshops centered on collaboratively mending my quilt.”

The Collective Mending Session’s main goal is to cultivate care for cloth and community through the meditative process of mending.

“We do this through partnering with community organizations to host workshops,” according to the Collective Mending Sessions website. “Workshops include basic mending instruction and building community through the shared task of stitching. An interactive resource library of instructional books and materials accompanies the project, providing participant-led learning when the artist is not present.”

Additional dates, same time and location, are March 11, 18 and 25.

This program is part of a series anchored by the reACT art exhibition titled #WomenKnowStuffToo, which is open from March 2 through April 3 in the Reiman Gallery of the Christian Petersen Art Museum in Morrill Hall. The purpose is to engage community members in an ongoing conversation celebrating women artists and makers, as well as their impact on the arts and expertise in the field.